17 March 2016 - Pigeon Air Patrol
Pigeons in tiny backpacks are measuring air pollution in London
Air pollution caused by diesel vehicles in London is bad — so bad that it is blamed for 9,500 premature deaths a year and has prompted Britain’s Supreme Court to order the government to make a plan for cleaning up the skies.
Now what is commonly seen as another scourge of the city, the pigeon, is helping in the fight against smog. On Monday, 10 birds outfitted in miniature backpacks carrying pollution sensors and GPS trackers took to the air, and they started tweeting — via beak, perhaps, but definitely via Twitter — their devices’ readings of nitrogen dioxide and ozone. Londoners who tweet at the Pigeon Air Patrol’s Twitter handle, @PigeonAir, are getting responses from the birds about air pollution in their area, and a live map of the pigeons’ location can be viewed online..
Read on...
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@PigeonAir
Ted Ranosa (Tech Times, 14/03/2016)
Air pollution continues to be one of the biggest health threats to people in the UK, with the level of contaminants in the air around the country's capital already breaching annual limits in just the first week of this year.
In order to monitor the quality of London air more closely, French tech company Plume Labs, together with marketing consultancy firm DigitasLBI, launched a new program called the Pigeon Air Patrol, which is designed to measure the amount of air pollution in the city.
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Racing Pigeons
(BBC, 14/03/2016)
A technology company has released ten pigeons wearing lightweight sensors to monitor pollution in London.
Plume Labs has fitted the birds with tiny backpacks which monitor nitrogen dioxide, ozone and volatile compounds.
Until Wednesday people can tweet their location to @PigeonAir and can find out how much pollution is registered in their area.
Read on...
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Pollution sensors
Adam Vaughan (The Guardian, 14/03/2016)
But now pigeons could play a small part in helping Londoners overcome one of the capital’s biggest health problems – its illegal levels of air pollution blamed for thousands of deaths a year.
On Monday, a flock of half a dozen racing pigeons were set loose from a rooftop in Brick Lane by pigeon fancier, Brian Woodhouse, with one strapped with a pollution sensor to its back and one with a GPS tracker.
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17 March 2016 - Pigeon Air Patrol, La Clé des Langues [en ligne], Lyon, ENS de LYON/DGESCO (ISSN 2107-7029), mars 2016. Consulté le 22/11/2024. URL: https://cle.ens-lyon.fr/anglais/key-story/archives-revue-de-presse-2016/17-march-2016-pigeon-air-patrol